After getting a late start out of Boulder, I finally (the drive ended up being around 20 hours) arrived at Electric Forest last night at around 6 p.m.

Two of my friends who live in Michigan got here early Thursday morning and saved us a camping spot that’s less than a five-minute walk from the venue entrance.

The campgrounds here are huge! Just rows and rows of cars and tents and people in colorful costumes. Since we got here so late, we quickly set up our tent and headed into the forest.

I’ve never seen anything like this place; it really is magical. There are four stages in the venue, plus one “hidden” stage, where I’m told unscheduled acts will play throughout the weekend.

In Sherwood Forest itself, they had stages set up with girls dressed up in go-go costumes doing pantomime. There were dozens and dozens of hammocks set up in the towering trees for anyone and everyone to chill out and relax.

There’s also a giant clock tower in the middle of the forest and the hands just spin in constant circles. Everything in there is lit up so that even at night, you can see exactly where you’re going. It really does look like a scene out of a fairy tale.

Since I was so entranced by the forest, I only made it to three of the stages last night. They are all pretty spread out so that you can’t hear any of the other stages from wherever you are.

I made it to see Borgore, Eoto and See-I last night. Eoto was definitely my favorite; they covered Ludacris and Phil Collins with awesome jams in between.

After Eoto, I was all danced out and exhausted from the long drive. My friends and I decided to make it an early night so we could save up our energy for the next three days.

I’m off to yoga (It’s going to be hot yoga since I’m guessing it’s about 90 degrees now), but check back to elephant tomorrow for another update and follow my updates on Twitter at @cassES89.

Cassandra Smith is an editorial intern at elephant journal. She is a fifth generation Colorado native who believes dance has the potential to liberate human consciousness from its cultural prison. Cassandra formerly trained at Boston Ballet and is currently a senior at University of Colorado Boulder studying journalism, sociology and philosophy. Read her blog at cassandralanesmith.com.

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